A Brief Guide to Star Trek

acting in 2000 to pursue photography, claimed he was happy to play Spock once more as he admired the work of Abrams and the film offered an ‘essential and interesting Spock role’. Re-energised by his work on the movie, and continuing to work with Abrams and his team, Nimoy would go on to guest star regularly in the pivotal role of William Bell on Abrams’
Fringe
.
    Although it had been much used throughout
Star Trek
, the writers of the new movie decided that time travel would be the best device they could use to begin a new story built around Kirk, Spock and McCoy and yet involve a character from
The Original Series
. Time travel would bring Spock Prime into contact with younger versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, allowing the old and new storylines to connect, and could thenbe forgotten in any subsequent films which would follow the adventures of the new characters without any overt connections to the past. ‘One of the reasons we wanted to break with the original
Star Trek
timeline was it felt restrictive’, Abrams told MTV.com. ‘The idea, now that we are in an independent time-line, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the past – or come up with brand new ones – to make potential stories.’
    Orci and Kurtzman drew inspiration from many elements of past
Star Trek
in working out their new approach, including spin-off novels not always thought of as canon by fans. Knowing that the continuity of
The Original Series
had itself been inconsistent, the writers set out to cherry-pick the elements they felt they needed to launch a new version of classic
Star Trek
without necessarily being slavish to established details. For example, it had long been established that the
Enterprise
had been constructed in Earth orbit, but the movie would instead depict the ship being built on the ground in Kirk’s home state of Iowa.
    In order to appeal to a mainstream audience perhaps un -familiar with the detailed universe created over many decades, Abrams and his creative team deliberately set out to simplify
Star Trek
, stripping out the technobabble of
The Next Generation
and replacing it with the action-adventure appeal of the first
Star Wars
movie. Humour and sex appeal were also key to Abrams’ recreation of
Star Trek
, elements that had been missing from some of the spin-off shows. The central characters – Kirk, Spock and McCoy – were reduced to archetypes, almost fulfilling the popular clichés that resided in the mainstream imagination. The characters of these new versions of the core
Star Trek
trio were easily delineated through their chief characteristics, summed up by their well-known catchphrases used in the 1987 novelty song ‘Star Trekkin’’ by The Firm.
    The question was, who could play these iconic characters? Which modern film stars or character actors could fill the well-worn roles of Kirk, Spock and McCoy and stand the comparisons with Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley – especially as whomever was playing young Spock would be acting directlyopposite the original. While it wasn’t quite the big show-business event predicted by Straczynski and Zabel’s reboot proposal, there was much media interest in the casting process for the all-new
Star Trek
.
    ‘It was hard in ways I didn’t anticipate’, said Abrams to
SFX
magazine of casting the movie. ‘I thought [finding the right actor for] Spock would be impossible, yet he was the first person we cast.’ Although the film would feature three versions of Spock (including Jacob Kogan as child Spock and Nimoy as Spock Prime), the focus was heavily on actor Zachary Quinto, who secured the task of reinventing the half-human, half-Vulcan
Enterprise
science officer. Quinto, who’d come to prominence as Sylar in the superpowers TV series
Heroes
, came to Abrams’ attention thanks to an interview in which he expressed interest in the role. Many commentators had pointed out Quinto’s curious physical resemblance to the young Nimoy. Quinto wore a blue shirt (reflecting Spock’s usual outfit on
The Original Series
) and flattened his hair to more resemble Spock for his audition. He was aided in taking on the persona of Spock by make-up and hair tricks that emphasised his Nimoy-lookalike characteristics, although he did claim, ‘There’s no question I was born to play the Spock role’. The only other actor who’d been publicly connected with the part was Oscar winner Adrien Brody.
    The most prominent candidate to inherit William Shatner’s role as